Japan plans 24-hour monitoring system for 50 volcanoes most at risk

With the deaths of 63 climbers killed when Mount Ontake erupted in September still fresh in the memory, the Japanese government has announced plans for a 24-hour monitoring system for the 50 volcanoes across the country considered most at risk.

The Japan Meteorological Agency will be required to set up crisis teams with local authorities and to create hazard maps and evacuation plans for residents, the reported.

Japan has 110 volcanoes that are listed as active, with 47 already subject to monitoring, but the nation's disaster preparedness plans were shown to be inadequate when 3,067-metre Mount Ontake erupted without warning on September 27.

The 63 dead is the worst toll in a volcano eruption in Japan since 1926 with several of the dead still on the mountain.

Conditions were too dangerous for the emergency response teams to search the entire peak, which was also covered in as much as one metre of ash and debris from the eruption.

Relatives of the victims were critical of the lack of an advance warning system on the peak before the eruption, with the disaster revealing that of 130 municipalities close to the 47 volcanoes that are considered at risk, just 20 have evacuation plans.